Hello World,
If you are from Tamilnadu or even familiar with tamil movies, you should be knowing that the Tamil film industry is not doing so well. Well, let’s just confirm on that and remove the ambiguity on that fact. The films have been getting horrible by the day and most of them resemble the same. Every once in a while, say 1 out of 50 films creates a positive impact on the audience. The rest just struggle to complete the minimum expectation of 3 days in the theaters. Overall, the Tamil film industry is struggling to make the minimum it needs to employ and feed the thousands who have no other career option on hand!
The tough part of the story is that the Tamil film industry refuses to accept the fact and strongly believes in the ever-popular marketing trend of ‘Brainwashing Through Publication’ [sounds familiar??!!] where, in spite of continuous failures, the industry participants will have paid media publications that will claim trivial success states including/similar but not limited to ‘Blockbuster Hit!’ ‘Mass Entertainer Breaks Record!’ ‘[Hero’s Name] Thrills Audience Once Again!’ ‘First day 250000 crore collection, Box Office Buried Under Money!’
If you still believe the films are ok and the industry is doing well, have a look at the exhibits below and think:
Why would one member of the value chain complain on the other if the industry was doing well and the money really flowed in crores? Remember, it is the distributor who is making this claim. Theater owners and distributors are the first groups to realise the revenues from the final customer group, the audience.
At what point do we admit? I was asked by my family to play a recent Rajini film on amazon prime and the family ended up chatting other topics, getting zoned out from the Rajini movie within 15-20 minutes. I now have a standing instruction not to play anymore Rajini movies. Rajini is done. At what point do we admit?
Instead of embracing variety and enabling new comers, the industry is now going to consider 'budget' and 'star value' of the film. The fact remains that big budget movies with popular stars are bombing everywhere and still the industry is stuck to its ego, largely funded and controlled by the interests of these select rich producers and popular actors. It's their money, it's their films. However, that doesn't not give them the right to waste the audience's time and money!
Yes there have been some viral trailers but popular trailers alone cannot and do not guarantee success for any film. If every film needs vitality on social media, then they are formally accepting that their content sucks and all they can do is cheat the audience to come to the theatres. This is a dangerous trend for the film industry. If sudden emotional response on social media is needed for a film's success, then they are not making proper films.
Over-abuse of the trailer technique has now resulted in bad trailers becoming a trend. In the mad rush to gain swift emotional response on social media, editors are being forced to cut trailers that are either outright contradictory to the actual film or is just a crude blend of insignificant scenes from the film. The consequence is nothing but bad trailers becoming a trend and now the audience is not willing to trust trailers anymore. There was one thing that served positively for Tamil films and now the industry out of its stupidity has sacrificed that as well.
Why would the support/service providers migrate to other film industries? Simply put, there is not much spending on their services and this means the film industry now has moved on to other 'better options.' However, if the industry is struggling, what is the point of migrating to 'better methods'??!!? You stopped purchasing a certain thing for your films and the vendors now moved on to other industries and still your films are flopping one after the other. So you are not making money and the others are also not making any money.How on earth is the Tamil film industry alone flourishing??!!?
If footfalls are dropping for big films and distributors are unwilling to pay 'Minimum Guarantee', how would any sane human with a tiny bit of rational sense will believe the lie that Tamil Film Industry is flourishing with hits and profits??!!
Read the above exhibit carefully again. It is not GST and instability causing the problems and 'films failing' is a pre-existing condition that the Tamil Film Industry is struggling to cope up with and the new tax regime and political instability is just exaggerating the problem. The industry needs to stop worrying about tase and politics and just focus on making good movies that do not fail. One trick is to stop doing what it is doing right now and rethink the art of filmmaking. If something has been the same for 50 years, it is about time, the industry realises that 50 years is long enough.
I am not the only one after all. There so many bloggers writing their sad stories covering their experience with very bad Tamil Films. People do not watch a film because so many others watch it. People watch films when many others say they watched the film and it is good. Is the 'attention span' of the Tamil film industry so small that it can't wait until the second half of that idea hits their brain??!!?
Highest grosser but NO PROFIT!!! When 'NO PROFIT' is unavoidable, why use 'Highest Grosser' and raise the level of the bulshit??!!? It is now beyond unbearable to see flops being glorified as mass masala money minting schemes!!! If the production house is afraid of producing another big budget and if the same company has produced back to back big budget films, it only means that select criminal-minded filmmaking groups have used popular actors as the front face and cheated them of their money, promising international blockbusters. The result is the same what happened with the american cd rental company Blockbuster. Out of business and nobody cared!
'Content being good' is something the Tamil Film Industry is struggling to get its head around. The addiction to 'PAKKA MASS' 'VERA LEVEL MASALA' 'JANARANJAGAM' 'SIZZLING STAR-STUDDED FILM' and 'MASS ENTERTAINER' has rendered the brains of Tamil film industry dead and incapable of delivering films that can be accepted as films. The craze for enabling the rich and influential, disregarding the creative talent, is what is keeping Tamil film industry in a brain-dead coma.
When the big films are failing what is wrong in letting the smaller ones access the screens/theaters the same way? By blocking the small budget films, the big ones gain no real advantage. Tamil film industry needs to understand that entertainment is not a zero sum game. Others' loss can never be your gain. That thing can happen only when two really good film makers release their films the same date and that too will even out over time. If something is good, people will come for it and the clash will cause a delay. At what point will the Tamil film industry learn this simple fact??!!
Overall, it is just failure after failure and most of the failures involve popular, trending film-stars. The distributors hate minimum guarantees, the producers are unwilling to fund big budget projects, the trailers are getting worse and the audience is suffering!!
The Tamil Film Industry is struggling to get its basics right and is still focused on marketing gimmicks and promotional campaigns for what is otherwise the worst piece of films which in many cases are an insult to the engaging and entertaining art form call Film-Making!!!
A what point do we admit??!!
Best regards,
